I think I'm a part of the first generation of journalists to skip print media entirely, and I've learned a lot these last few years at Forbes. My work has appeared on TVOvermind, IGN, and most importantly, a segment on The Colbert Report at one point. Feel free to follow me on Twitter or on Facebook, write me on Facebook or just email at paultassi(at)gmail(dot)com. I'm also almost finished with my sci-fi novel series, The Earthborn Trilogy.

Why the Exploitation of Gamers is Our Own Damn Fault

Gamers, on the whole, are a very volatile group. When we’re not flaming each other over our choice of console, or debating which modern military first person shooter is the best modern military first person shooter, we’re turning our ire toward the companies that make the games we claim to love.

It’s been a complex relationship we’ve had with the corporate titans of the industry over the past few years. Though we love many of their titles, and play them religiously, we hate a lot of things these companies have done to pull the industry in a direction we believe it shouldn’t go.

The battlefronts are often subjects like DRM and used copies of games, but lately DLC has been a primary target for gamers to complain about. On the surface, DLC seems to be a serious affront to the traditionally held notions of video games we’ve held dear for years now. With preorder bonuses, level packs and carved out campaign extras, we feel like we’re getting ripped off to some degree as our games are not “complete” at launch due to a lack of this content. This illustration jokingly shows what it might look like had all these new revenue avenues existed during the “golden era” of gaming we all revere.

But what gamers fail to realize is that back then, these companies didn’t understand just how much people love video games. Yes, they sold well, and the industry grew, but as it has, it’s become clear to these companies just how much blood can be truly squeezed out of these rock hard fanbases of long-established titles. And we’re letting them do it.

The most recent controversy in question that inspired this post is that of a piece of Mass Effect 3 DLC from Bioware/EA called “From Ashes” that gamers are deeming the “worst ever.” The reason being is that it’s “launch day” DLC, meaning that the extra campaign segment being offered in the collector’s edition ($20 extra) or sold separately ($10) was actually developed before the release of the game. Even though Bioware claims it was created in the “downtime” before launch, to gamers, this makes it look like the section has been cut out of the original title, and is being sold back to them for an additional payment. Compounding the issue further, the details of what’s in the pack have fans of the game tearing their hair out because when the alien race of the featured character was revealed, those familiar with the lore deemed it an absolutely essential part of the game, far from the superfluous content DLC usually offers.

So once again gamers have taken to the digital streets, lamenting that EA is diabolical and claiming they will boycott the game for this dishonorable maneuver. The loudest voice of the movement would be that of professional game enthusiast Total Biscuit, a YouTube star with a huge following, and I count myself among his fans. In the video below, he emphatically explains in detail exactly what’s wrong with this Mass Effect 3 DLC pack, and comes to the ultimate conclusion that he will not be buying the game in protest of the practice, as he hopes to encourage further incursions into gamers’ wallets in the future.

I’m not blameless when it comes to complaining about DLC either. One of my more popular posts a ways back was titled “The Day DLC Went Too Far” and it was about how EA (yet again) was testing its luck by offering power guns for Battlefield 3 as preorder bonuses, which weren’t available anywhere else. I was outraged then, so why am I more subdued now? Why am I not jumping on board with Mr. Biscuit and calling for EA’s head?

You would think writing for Forbes and having an economics degree, I would have written this post long ago, but it’s taken me reading a specific comment online that really hammered the truth home to me.

“ EA seems like they only care about money.”

This was posed as a complaint about the DLC and EA’s other sins, but it’s one of those “well, duh” moments you don’t think about until it’s right in your face.

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All I wonder is why can indie game companies do things like 20$ game release and big free patches (as in minecraft his patches or terraria’s 1.1 patch) but then the big corporations are all making their game as much as possible as the sims 3 (which is a basic game whit little to no contend without any expansions, mods, DLC or things you buy in the shop). how can you say they’re not evel when they make something without any love just for the money. Mass effect is great but it isn’t 70$ worth and an account of origin. And then they wonder why we share/pirate games or sell and buy second hand so they lose sales. these arn’t lost sales because the price was to high they never would have bought it if they couldn’t pirate it or buy it cheaper. plus if I find one bug after the launch patch they have waisted their time with the DLC because it will not be complete on launch and they could have used their development time on bug fixes.

Somewhere out there, a link exists between this and the Freemium design that’s endemic to mobile gaming. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that EA is also the one company that’s converting most of their IP to Freemium on smartphones/tablets.

you pretty much summed it up, while i wont pay for the dlc on the titles you mentioned, i think the standard game on CoD and mass effect is good enough for me, i really would pay for it on the titles i’m more desparate about. new storys on gears of war? will buy.

and dont tempt me with extra dungeons and levels and weapons on a zelda game or you can have my debit card and permission to set up recurring payments til i die

I tend to agree with pretty much everything you have said here Paul. And like you, though I commend True Biscuit for his boycott of Mass Effect 3, the practice is really an exercise in futility as his boycott, even if he gets a couple thousand people on the bandwagon will ultimatley do nothing. And most of these people will end up buying ME3 off XBL or through a 3rd party vendor used anyway for a cheaper cost. Doing it that way may hurt the pocket book of EA a bit, but not enough to cause a real stir.

Personally, I tend to look at DLC more of a good thing (with two meanings). More so that DLC is a good for games in general as it enchances the overall gameplay experience, and more so that if the gamer is purchasing it – they must have liked the original game enough to want more, hence more of a “good” thing.

The pictures you put up in one the first page of the article are great – but I know that if I could have had Starfox 64 version 1.1 with two extra “hidden” levels that were accessable from the already hidden levels there on the left, I would have paid $5 for it in a heartbeat. The person who came up with the idea of “maybe instead of creating an entirely new game with a short turn around period, potentially pushing the limits of what we can do as a development studio and sullying our reputation if the games sucks, we should just make a new mission within the exisiting confines of the game and sell that” – is brilliant. Not only must this save production costs, but it keeps the fans (even the disgruntled ones) engaged to the point that they don’t forget about your product, so that next time around they will be some of the first to purchase your new product. Brand Awareness/Loyalty.

But hey, that’s just me. As far as DLC goes, if I like the game (hardware like maps, missions etc.) – I buy the DLC. If I don’t believe it’s worth it, or deem it foolish (spending money for new game outfits??) – I won’t buy it. It really all just boils down to priorities and personal preference. That said; I will also be buying ME3 + the DLC.

Really excellent points! It will be interesting to see what the DLC Laffer Curve looks like.

When I love a game, I’m willing to go to ridiculous lengths to get extra pieces of it. Besides the price, though, I think a lot of the outrage surrounds the argument of “extra” vs. “integral” content, which can, of course, be subjective.

Even when I’m annoyed, I find it exciting to watch the evolution of the industry.

As long as gamers are willing to pay for the content, it may not even be fair to call it exploitation. It has been pointed out elsewhere that DLC serves a purpose that game consumers rarely see. While we expect game companies to patch and support their games long after launch, game companies have had a hard time financially justifying keeping staff on after the development cycle is finished. DLC gives companies financial incentives to keep staff on longer to support their titles and continue to make additional content for gamers to consume. I think gamers have a fundamental misunderstanding about the benefit they are receiving because of DLC.

For the most part i agree with your assessment of the situation. However you’re missing a few important elements of the equation.

1): Piracy is an option. Companies perceived as using disagreeable marketing tactics, selling games for too much and having bad customer relations (DRM) consistently have the highest rates of piracy among their games.

While Totalbiscut’s video may not seem like it will make a large impact, i feel like the majority of his influence will be seen in the piracy numbers.

People want to play the game without paying for it, and Mass Effect 2 was already notoriously valued as one of the most pirated games of all time, i expect with all the additional issues EA has brought to the table with ME3 that it will shatter piracy records.

Which may indeed mean piracy is directly representing the die-hard fan’s unwillingness to give a gaming company money, possibly also one of the few things keeping game prices down at this point.

You can argue about the legality and morality of piracy all you want. But it sums down to a few things at this point.

#1). The artists, writers, programmers and artists that work on Me3 will not recieve a single additional penny based on the actual sales on the game.

#2). Millions of players are already outraged at the DRM enforced by EA for Mass effect 3, for those of you who haven’t played the demo and seen the horrors of origin.

Origin (A Steam like digital game-ownership service) Has an ELUA segment that voids your 4th amendment rights, allowing the program to search and send EA information about your computer OS, System Specs, The programs you have installed, the files you have on your computer, the websites you access and various other things including files, passwords, documents, ect.

-Yes, simply opening process explorer and clicking on “Origin” while it’s running reveals it doing these actions. The ELUA and the program have not been changed to this date.

Pirating the game removes this DRM

3). The DLC and the extortion that is “Digital Copies” remember, 50$ is how much a game costs at a retail store in physical form, which includes gasoline, payment for the retail workers, the trucks that shipped them, the packaging and the Cds. Digital copies are not worth 50$, specially not 60$ or in the case of Me3 70$ for the complete game.

Completely agree with that, but the problem with this approach is that we are basically opening a self-perpetuating cycle.

games are expensive –> people pirate them –> companies get less money –> they pull stunts like that to make up for it –> people get pissed –> they pirate even more At some point, this will stop working, and it looks to me like EA is pushing hard to find that point.

Companies may try to invest in better piracy protection rather than trying to make up for the money loss by upping the price, but that can still get them trapped in the same loop if the anti-piracy measures get to the point of actually impeding on the game’s playability, like in the case of Ubisoft’s Assassin’s Creed. And if people turn to the pirated version of a game because they don’t want to have to put up with the cumbersome anti-piracy feature (which in this case stops you from playing the game without an internet connection) something has gone seriously wrong.

Origins scans for the same things Steam does. It does not report anything back to EA, despite what the silly stories that get spread across the internet these days.

Piracy is never a legitimate option. Decent, honest people spending their hard-earned money on the things they enjoy – that’s legitimate. The dude torrenting the game somebody like me just spent hard-earned money on? Hell no.

Those without a short (or selective) memory will remember that DRM came about because of mainstream internet piracy.

I’m not going to say DRM is good. It isn’t. It’s bad in almost every conceivable manner. But nothing short of swallowing the absurdly fictitious and delusional propaganda coming from the torrent communities will change the fact, that piracy is worse. Far, far worse.

It’s only right that the blame for DRM be shared. Everybody who ever torrented a game, a film, or an album, also shares the blame. When you opened the torrent client, you asked to put up with DRM. When you hacked the DRM, you asked for more sophisticated forms of DRM. And so on and so on. You reap what you sow. Don’t like DRM? Karma is a bitch.

Piracy is pure, undiluted 100% greed. It’s consumption without compensation or contribution. It’s all “Take take take, me me me”, screw the artists, the filmmakers, the developers, the writers, the paying consumers, so long as spoiled brat gets the movie, the game, the entire discography, that spoiled and selfish brat wants. It’s disgusting on every level.

The fact that some pirates have the audacity, the nerve, to even attempt to justify their actions; to attempt to legitimize what they do; and present themselves as some kind of victim – is completely disgraceful.

I never complained about DLCs, but I think “From Ashes” is a special case.

Digging a little into ME3 demo files I found Prothean squadmate definition (including powers and loadout), which means that “From Ashes” DLC is part on main story taken away, despite Bioware statement: “The Prothean is optional content”.

If this is true, EA is charging twice customers who have ordered standard edition months ago.

Good perspective. I tend to agree with you that games and DLC still offer us immense entertainment value. I am currently having this debate on other forums about the perception that certain DLC is tantamount to utter greed on the part of Publishers. I disagree with that but the reality is this only increases Pirating and the fact people that Pirate feel justified in doing it. That to me is the biggest issue, that certain decisions made by Publishers increase Pirating. And I consider that the biggest threat to sustained and continued development in PC gaming by some companies.

I think piracy is becoming more of a political tool than it was in the past, and as odd a statement this may seem. I feel it holds a natural place in the consumer-based market.

Piracy has existed in many other forms, In the clothing department “Off Brand” jeans often share the look, but not the price tag. Off Brand Foods share the flavor but not the Name-Brand that cost so much to advertise and make the product popular.

In many cases across our market, piracy in one way or form has taken one company / person’s ideas and profited off them, while giving consumers a different and cheaper choice. These ideas are NEVER the true property of the knock off company, but they make money for someone and are cheaper for the consumer.

Our economy is literally built upon choices and competing entities, but due to the nature of software that simply doesn’t exist. You either like what EA is doing or you Don’t, you either pay 70$ or you don’t get a game.

And there’s nothing we can really compare games to in our real market besides the other two most pirated things, movies/music. Combine this with the very overlooked fact “Digital information by nature is free to copy/paste”.

And these settle into the “Entertainment Industry”. Now for whatever reason; the general public feels entitled to free or cheap entertainment. Chances are they have a shitty life and need entertainment, need a distraction for the day, or are just influenced by the very advertisements and environments the entertainment industry made ON PURPOSE.

Either way, piracy doesn’t hurt companies. It looks like it hurts companies, it looks like it’s taking money that they would otherwise be getting.

But when was the last time someone was punished for illegally selling knock off fruit loops and profiteering off of the invention, advertisement and development kelloggs created in the first place?

Ask yourself why it’s not a crime when money is involved, but when things are free suddenly everyone panics.

You compare game piracy to cheap knock-off brands of clothing or food. The fact is however, that when you buy…say a cheap Coke, you do not get THE Coke. It’s not the same, it’s not allowed to be the same. Same goes for clothing. When you buy a knock-off “Lewi” instead of a real “Levi” you won’t get the same kind of quality.

When it comes to games, when someone pirates a game, it is the full product. It is the original. There is nothing missing (except when you cannot Pirate the DLC due to Online requirements maybe).

So in essence, pirating a game is a lot like going into a store and stealing a pair of CK Boxers because you feel the price is too high. And no amount of arguing can change that.

If you are pirating a game, you get a full quality product for free. It’s not like some other company is making a slightly less polished, slightly less entertaining and slightly more bug-filled version of a game and is offering it for cheap.

Piracy does hurt the industry, because it is NOT like cheap knock-offs that “plague” other industries. And Digital information is free to copy/paste…I don’t know what I should say to that.

Are you seriously going to tell me that hundreds of people should work years of their lives to provide entertainment and fun to a consumer but NOT get anything in return just because it’s a digital form of entertainment? Maybe I misunderstood that comment, but to me, it sounds a little silly.

In any case. To sum it up, pirating games is not like buying that cheap, no-name Kraft Dinner knockoff. It doesn’t compare.

This post sounds sadly like it’s trying to justify piracy and I really, really think that is not the right way to go about this.

To be honest i was rambling, it’s nearly impossible to make sense of the flux of ideas, reactions and results of piracy in the long run.

The truth is, you can’t justify it to someone who feels it’s wrong, and you can’t criminalize it to someone who feels it’s right.

There’s no definite argument that tells you what you’re doing is bad and no definite argument that tells you it’s good. Everyone against it just resorts to calling it “Stealing” in an effort to connect it to preexisting notions about physical crime, when in reality there’s very little connection.

The real truth is that piracy represents other markets that simply aren’t tapped yet and simply makes simple flaws in the current notion that “Ownership” exists for digital content on an unregulated and interconnected marketplace that allows the free transfer of information.

Either everything in digital format is free, or nothing is free. That’s the way it will end up.

I think EA is a bigger threat to the studio than piracy. Without EA, I’m sure the respective studios would build a respected, truthful fanbase that would WANT to support them. With those vampires on their back, sucking blood off the studio and the fans, who’d pay for a (in many cases) shitty product?

Without EA and it’s alikes on the market, believe me, the studios would flourish like never before!

For some time now I let a lot of time pass after a game has been released until it has dropped considerably in price. That has a lot of reasons:

1. More and more games require you to use some kind of extra online-distribution software together with an account in order to be able to install the game itself even if the game you bought is a retail version. If these platforms like Steam or Origin crashing, for what ever reasons, while you are playing, the game then also crashes. That devaluates the game hugely in my opinion. 1.1 These platforms then makes it clear, the game you just bought for a lot of money and you thought you now own: You don’t own this game! The operator of the platform has all the authority to simply cut you off of your games.

2. Continually more aggressive “copy protection systems” are being developed that only bugging the honest customer who are paying for the product but the ones who pirate the game only laughing at these mechanics, because these “copy protections” get dissembled pretty fast. Some of these systems even require you to be online the whole time you play a singleplayer game. It would be interesting to know, how much it cost to develop these systems – I’m pretty sure these costs are immense and a lot of money could be saved if dropped.

3. DLCs are some kind of a curse. Some of them have partly good content that would justify to charge the customer but mostly these prices are way over the top and even more of these DLCs are just not worth buying. Lets take the ME2 DLCs as an example: All these Alternate experience packs and weapon packs had 3 items included and cost around 2-3$ and that is way to expensive – I would’ve payed max 1$ for that so i never bought them. And then there are these story DLCs with a range from 7-10$ and you get only an extra playtime of about 1 1/2 – 2 hours; This is also way to much if you consider what the game itself cost. Now compare that to the length, item weight and price of a good ol’ Add-On … just ridiculous. 3.1 To buy these DLCs you can’t simply draw your credit card and buy them you first have to acquire MS Points/Bioware Points/Playstation Points etc. that you usually can’t get in the exact amount you need to get the DLC so at the end of the process of buying these DLCs you have Points left that then rot and you effectively wasted even more money.

4. Absentee Mod support. Nowadays the release of mod tools is a dying practice to prolong the lifetime of games but that is a stupid strategy. Look at The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind for example, this game still gets mods from the community and is still being played by many gamers because of this. The same will happen with The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim. One criteria I have to consider a purchase of a game is the abillity to mod a game. I hope Bethesda will further proof, that releasing a highly mod-able game will pay off in the end.

All of hat led me to the move to wait until the price of the game it self drops and good portion of DLCs has been released so if I buy the game and DLCs i do have a complete game and don’t have the feeling of being raped of all my money.

Mr. Tassi, you really should go and check what CDProjekt Red has done with The Witcher 2, which isn’t the best selling game in for the PC the USA only because of prejudice.

It is the best game released in a long time though and your colleague over the NYT did a brilliant piece about it. Now, not only all their DLC is FREE but they never stopped patching the game, they made an extensive new difficulty level and features 2.0 patch and are now giving us the Enhanced Edition with all the improvements which are added to the x-box release of the game.

And the EE means: Enhanced graphics Enhanced controls Enhanced camera system More detailed tutorial More complex leveling system 4 hours of new content New characters New Locations New Quests Almost 40 minutes of new cinematics Changes done based on fan feedback from the original PC players Keeping it a niche game at the expense of alienating casual and the majority of console players All built on an in house engine.

Well I guess different people have different breaking points, personally I also love a lot of EA games, but if their business practices prevail and gear even stronger towards exploitation I might stop getting their games altogether.

I’ve already stopped buying any Activision titles (including Blizzard) years ago out of that reason alone and while I did get Mass Effect 2, Battlefield 3 (despite Origin), Star Wars: The Old Republic (also paid for two months sub before I cancelled it because of this) and several other games like the Dead Space series and similar in the last few years, EA for me is on the best way to go on that list right quick if it continues showing its disdain by trying to exploit its customers openly like this. I’ll spend my money on more Indie games instead ,on companies like Valve (I have like 350 games on Steam) and CDProjekt that respect their customers and value their opinion (or at least those that don’t exploit them too much), or on things like KickStarter projects for games that I actually want to see like the Double Fine Adventure, the upcoming (round-based, isometric) Wasteland 2 or the Obsidian game. Don’t let it get to that point EA… so far it’s just Mass Effect 3.

I also think you are underestimating the amount of people willing to take a stand, given I don’t have any numbers… but especially when it comes to EA they have been rather good at gathering the gamers ire lately, this issue alone might not even push it too far, but they’ve made sure of mentioning that they delayed Mass Effect because it has to have a Multiplayer mode, they introduced Origin and made it a requirement for all their games since Battlefield 3, hell they even pulled several games off Steam because of that (I think it was Crysis 2 and Dragon Age 2 and a large number of Steam-”followers” didn’t like that one bit), there was also the whole thing about Dragon Age 2 being of rather doubtful quality (to not say it sucked) and I think Mass Effect has more DLC than 5 other games combined with all the Exclusive Pre-Order/Collector’s Edition/Figurines/Artbooks/Razer Hardware DLC, iOS tie-in games and whatnot. I made a Poll regarding this issue about a month ago on a bigger game community, and while it’s not exactly representative and error-prone about 21% (of ~1700 people) voted that they’re not going to get the game because of the issues surrounding it (and that was even before this controversy): http://tinyurl.com/7u2d9y4

Now EA can’t measure the number of people that WOULD have gotten the game if they were fair in their dealings with their customers (other than maybe through cancelled Pre-Orders at any given time), but is it really worth getting a number of people to not get your game at all for the increase in revenue that the DLCs promise?

Adding to that they are also trying to compete with piracy as some people have mentioned above, and Techdirt had a rather nice article about this the other day: http://www.techdirt.com/blog/casestudies/articles/20120223/20250117858/if-you-want-to-compete-with-free-this-is-what-you-need-to-know.shtml They propose that every product of this kind has a cost in following currencies: ($M) Money-dollars; ($T) Time-dollars; ($P) Pain-in-the-butt-dollars and ($I) Integrity-dollars. Now I don’t know how it is with other people, but the cost in $P and $I for me regarding EA games is getting rather high lately.

This would have never happened if gamers never turned their back on SEGA.

Dreamcast 1999-2001 ;(

Sega didn’t give a xhit about EA because they new they could produce better equalvent with its then large team of developers. It’s NFL 2K and NBA 2K were crapping all over whatever EA’s offerings but fans were more enticed by the non-gaming offerings from SEGA’s rival Sony, the DVD and rumored mp3 support of the PlayStation 2. Sony’s more lax restrictions to its 3rd party developers let revs like EA do whatever they wanted and thus the 2000s show EA expand to the giant money sucking conglomerate that you see today.

I can’t speak for anyone else, but I’m 40 years old. I grew up with video games. They have piled annoyance after annoyance onto a $60 purchase and apparently the consumer continues to rewarded this behavior.

All I can speak for is me. It may be rather obvious, but if you wait a couple of months these games generally only cost around $30 apiece or even less if you wait longer. After a couple of months you are less likely to be over excited about a new game which means that you won’t be buying them on impulse as they come out anytime a marketing campaign gets you excited. A couple of months later DLC is usually out, the online community is either established or gone, and the game has been thoroughly reviewed.

So unless a game is something I am very strongly anticipating, I just do what the publishers and retailers have TRAINED me to do.

I just wait a couple of months for a big discount that makes a lot of the sting out of the myriad ways publisher’s mistreat, inconvenience, disrespect. and attempt to exploit the people they want to buy their game at full price.

I believe that you are simply wrong in saying that the consumer is showing companies that we will pay $60-$70 for a brand new game. I look at steam and see many games selling ridiculously fast when released at the $20-$30 price range. What’s more, is that the devs for these games are the last ones to complain about piracy and loss of profits and actually the first to happily claim that their launch was a huge success.

The market is speaking when that kind of thing happens and I can only assume that EA/Bioware is ignoring the subtleties of what the consumer is saying through increased piracy of their overpriced games and purchase of second-hand games (which is now apparently an issue despite being around since the dawn of video gaming). It’s like EA/Bioware aren’t able to catch on so instead they bludgeon the market with overpriced games and a ton of expensive and sub-par DLC in order to milk their cash-cow even more. They remind me of a confused child resorting to aggression to deal with a frustrating situation.

I’ve been impressed with Remedy recently with their PC release of Alan Wake at the reasonable price of $35 on Steam. They simply told Pirates to enjoy the game, made no fuss and released the complete edition of the game too. They made their money within hours of the release. This is why saying that companies know we will buy their game at any price because we, as the consumer have shown them we, will is simply untrue. We’ve just showed them the opposite is a much better, more viable option in the case of Alan Wake

The real question is… those 30% of Xbox 360 owners who aren’t on Xbox Live, how are they supposed to get it? I live in regional Australia, where the internet is patheticly expensive, and already pay about $100 (AUD) for a new game. I’m not paying to get a bigger internet data cap, pay for Xbox live and then pay for the content on top of that.

I’ll pay for the content but make it available some other way. Have a website where you can order a DLC disk +postage and packaging. Actually another Bioware game, Dragon Age: Origins did this, but they’re refusing to for Mass Effect!!! Why? (I lie, that did it for the 1st one but not the 2nd, even though the DLC for the 1st one wasn’t that important to the story line).

I have the $. I’m happy to pay for it. But why do I get told: No sorry, you’re not a real customer, real customers are online. I bought every game new, even bought the comic books, the novels and the Collectors Edition (I even giggle at the name!) yet still no way for me to access this content reasonably without having to move to another city.

Actually has anybody seen any good articles about why Australians have to put up with such insanely high prices for games? The ME3 Collectors Edition is $130 AUD (seriously! convert that into your local currency and see how badly we’re being shafted! It’s even cheaper in New Zealand and there is NO excuse for that!).

Cmon bioware… After struggling with Games for Windows Live and other DRM crap, don’t give me more reasons to pirate (I don’t, but god sometimes it’s tempting).

Good point, and I agree that it’s all a part of the economic system and money-making. I’d point a few things:

“EA seems like they only care about money.”

I think you forgot to put a big accent on “ONLY”. If they’d stick to certain quality standards, I’d gladly let them rip me off. Secondly, I firmly believe, as you similarly stated in your last paragraph, that this is choking the artistic/creative potential many of the teams have (or better said, had).

You don’t think DLC and micro-transactions wouldn’t have existed in some form in the past? Naive, to say the least.

Remember that Nintendo were dabbling in DLC territory with the Famicom modem, and later, the e-reader. They were selling card packs for Pokemon Ruby and Sapphire that would ‘unlock’ sets of themed NPC trainer battles, and reward players with Enigma berries.

In my youth, avid gamers like me would buy a new game, and then buy a magazine full of advertising to get cheats and tips.

And then were the arcades. I’ve no doubt I sank hundreds of dollars in to single machines over the years. On any given weekend, during my teen years, I would have no problem AU$40 into arcade fighting games within the space of 5-6 hours.

Games are expensive to develop, and expensive to play. The trick is, to avoid feeling like you need to have every little piece of content. You don’t. Buy a game at the advertised price, play it, enjoy it. It’s not had to do. Only buy the DLC if it actually interests you. You don’t need it. You don’t have to get it. It doesn’t render your game “incomplete” if you don’t get it (that’s purely psychological). And no, the developers or the publishers don’t OWE you it.